The Librain

If you have never read this blog before, or don’t know me, then maybe you need some background before reading about my day. As I write, I am sitting in a lovely new library that was only opened in October 2009. I was appointed, in September 2008, as the first professional librarian in this small independent school with the remit of supporting the development of a totally refurbished library. I work alone, so have to do all of the tasks involved in setting up and running a school library – including a huge pile of new books that need cataloguing and processing. To make sure that I don’t neglect the more basic tasks, I set aside two days a week to attempt to get through these. On the other three days I focus on more professional, developmental things – the best bits of the job!

Day in the Life of a Librarian – Wednesday 27th January 2010

Before school: I start the day at 8.30 by attending the Staff Meeting that takes place in the library. Although this means that the library cannot be opened to students before school, I am happy to have the meeting in here as it gives me an opportunity to see all the staff and to be kept “in the loop”. In some schools, the librarian cannot attend staff meetings as he/she is expected to open the library to students. Although working with students is a vital part of our work, being seen as part of the whole staff is enormously important to our standing in school!

During Registration, I check my two email accounts, catch up with Twitter and a couple of mailing lists. A parcel from Amazon arrived at home this morning – it contains a digital photo frame that I want to place on the issue desk to advertise the work of the library. On reading the instructions, I have a few queries, so I ask my fantastic PLN on Twitter for some help. Within minutes three people have answered my question. Fantastic!

Period 1: I have a Year 8 English class coming in during Period 2 to develop their reading and so I look around the library to choose some great new books for a “Wave and Rave” – otherwise known as a Book Talk! I glance through the books to remind myself of their stories and look through the Reading Profiles that the class filled in a couple of weeks ago.

Period 2: The class comes in with their teacher. They are, in the main, quite accomplished readers and many of the students bring in their own books or ones they have previously borrowed. I can see some that I have recommended to them on previous occasions. The Wave and Rave goes well and lots of the books are borrowed. It will be interesting to see next week if they have enjoyed them.

Period 3: I think about the lesson just gone and make some notes for myself so that I don’t lose track. I have an Excel file with all the English classes, from Years 6 to 8, on a grid with the lessons in the Library planned out in advance. I want to teach the students how to use SearchStar (our OPAC), as this has just been installed, and so contact Microlibrarian Systems to ask them if they can let me have high resolution images to use in a presentation. I want to make a whole-class presentation that I will upload to the Library website after I have used it with classes. After showing this to classes, I will then take small groups each week to make sure that all the students in Years 6 to 8 are proficient at using SearchStar. Some have already started using it during lunchtimes, but I need to reach all the students.

Break: At the moment, I don’t open the Library at Break as I feel that it is important to get into the Staff Room and talk to the teaching staff. This is when I hear about lessons or initiatives – I have been known to jump in with offers of help! Our Modern Languages Netvibes page came out of overhearing a conversation at break!

Period 4: The school was informed on Monday that we are being inspected next week. I want to make sure that the English class that I have in on Tuesday will go well and so I look at the materials – The Reading Game. I will speak to the teacher later to make sure that we are both happy with the lesson plan – as classes have only just started in this new library, the teaching staff have not really reached a comfortable working “zone” with me as yet. I am sure that will come!

Periods 5 & 6: My lunch break! I am reading “Malice” by Chris Wooding as I eat my lunch – brilliant!

Lunch: Busy again with over 45 students coming in. Beginning to see a mixture of ages now, which is encouraging. I walked behind a group of boys who were poring over magazines and books and was pleasantly surprised to see that they were reading Art books on Surrealism and Impressionism!

Period 7: Expecting meeting with Head of History to discuss how we might work together now the library is developing. We are going to talk about research skills and how we can borrow collections from the Schools Library Service. Catch up with Tweets, emails etc., whilst waiting for her to come in.

Period 8: Revisiting materials for presentation to Year 12 tomorrow on independent learning: “Being Organised” and “Effective Research: Avoiding Plagiarism”. I wrote these before Christmas and want to make sure I am up-to-speed with them again before the session tomorrow! The first presentation is on PowerPoint and showcases lots of Web2.0 and other tools the students could use. The second uses Prezi – which really wowed the students last time!

Period 9: Writing up a “Quick Facts” document for the inspectors – not so very quick though! Full of tables to show the improvement in the stock since I was appointed to spend the development money! I have also worked on a Library Handbook which sets out more qualitative data – not that we have a lot as yet as the library has only just opened.

After school until 5.15: Tweaking the inspectors’ document – trying to fit it into as few pages as possible. Several students in after school, working on computers and doing their homework.

And alongside all of this: sorting out printer & laptop problems; answering the phone; checking emails and tweets; thinking about a range of research tasks I have been asked to do by students and staff; showing people how to use features of Word, PowerPoint and Publisherhanding out paper; issuing and returning books; reading the post; checking on behaviour; smiling and greeting when people come in the door; straightening the shelves……………

A Happy Day in the Life of a School Librarian!

Despite our “Big Freeze” here in the UK and the dark & gloomy short days of the Winter months, I have good reasons to be feeling very positive and optimistic about one tiny school library! Reading about wider issues with public libraries in particular, the blogosphere is all a-Twitter about this issue at the moment, you could be feeling that we are at the beginning of the end for libraries. But our library at Dixie is at the beginning of the beginning. We have created a lovely space and are improving the book collection by leaps and bounds. Now we have to get the Library used – for reading development work, for information literacy teaching, for encouraging the use of new and developing technologies.

So, from next week we are bringing in classes from Years 6 to 8 for one English lesson per week to support reading development. This is nothing new, of course. This kind of work is the meat and drink of school libraries. But it is new in my school. Yes, classes were occasionally brought into the old Library and I know that teachers did their best to enthuse about books and reading. Now they have a new element – not just an improving collection to choose from, but an experienced and knowledgeable…… Librarian! I passionately believe that we are the key element in developing reading for pleasure in schools and improving literacy. So let’s see what happens!

Other teachers are also starting to talk to me about using the Library and Librarian to help improve student’s learning. The key issues, as seem to be the case in most schools, are the:

• Cut-and-paste culture amongst students
• Quality of homework/coursework produced
• Lack of resource lists and referencing
• Plagiarism
• Lack of ability to select and evaluate information

Again, none of this is new or startling, but having a Librarian in post is new in our school. Teachers are beginning to talk to me about how I can help them and so I feel optimistic that I can make a difference….

….and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

I found this amazing video – great use of Animoto – on Judy O’Connell’s blog and am embedding it here – partly because I want to share it but also as a way of reminding myself of it to use in school at an appropriate moment!

Recently, I took part in the really brilliant online conference organised by Your School Library that I talked about in my previous posts. the theme was on school library design and also the wider issues of designing learning spaces. In some ways, the course was not timed very well for me – we had only just opened our new school library! But, it was interesting to see just how much the ideas shared on the course fitted in with what I had tried to achieve with the design of our new library.

Some of the libraries shared with us on the course were totally amazing to those of us who work in the UK. Here, we generally do not have spaces big enough to turn into “Learning Commons”, even if that idea were appropriate for our schools!

As I take part in the YSL courses I feel more and more that I am connecting with fantastic teacher-librarians from around the world who are working at a level far beyond most of us in the UK. This idea inspires me to try to achieve more – it feels like climbing up a steep mountain-side to reach the summit. On the way up, colleagues are reaching down to help us all get to the top together. As I learn more from these librarians, I realise just how much I don’t know. This is where my lack of teacher-training makes itself felt. Quite often, we are speaking different languages – and I don’t mean the fact that many of the participants come from a range of countries where English is not the first language. What I do mean is that my first language was Librarianship and theirs is Education. I have to travel towards the Education side and strive to understand a language that is sometimes not that comfortable – there are occasionally huge gaps in the translation! But I will keep trying as I feel that I somehow have to make up the deficiencies that my lack of teacher training gives me.

If that sounds negative, I don’t mean it to be. This striving for knowledge is an important part of any professional development – I have always said that when I stop learning or trying to learn, that will be the time for me to retire. Hopefully, this is a long time away!

So, what did I learn from the course this time? Well, that many of the things we had built into our tiny new library space were spot-on in terms of new ways of thinking about school libraries – particularly trying to make a flexible space, displaying books face-on as much as possible, using slatwall imaginatively, positioning of our desk, trying to build in good ICT facilities.

I also took away some more practical ideas that I immediately tried out. One library had the words “Ask, Think, Create” on the walls. This library also had a very large space which had been turned into a Learning Commons. Musical and other performances take place regularly and have been very well received. I thought about the words used on the walls and one night (when my creative thoughts tend to bounce around the most) I realised that I could extend the words to make a kind of logo for the library. The next day I played around on Publisher and made a logo with the words:

Think…Ask…Read…Imagine…Create… @ Your Library

I have used this on bookmarks, compliments slips, report covers, noticeboard frames – in fact on all library communications and stationery. The words could be put on the library walls and also fit an Information Literacy “framework”. I am going to play around with the idea some more and see where it leads.

As to the performance idea – I spoke to our Head of Music that week and suggested this to her – she was thrilled with the idea. So let’s see where that goes…

There have been some great presentations so far, giving lots of food for thought – much of it very profound indeed. So, today was my turn! I presented on “Creating a 21st Century Library in an 1828 Building”. There are no complex ideas here, just a practical case-study of how we created this lovely new library in a tiny space. I enjoyed putting the presentation on VoiceThread – so here it is:

Again, it is some time since I posted here. I must admit that I have found the last few weeks very difficult professionally – not in my own job, but in the wider profession of school librarianship. Anyone passing by this blog, wondering about my reaction to recent announcements, will have to contact me privately as I am still thinking about how to deal with my feelings on this matter. Most UK school librarians will know what I am talking about here.

I will move on, because that issue depresses me totally and I don’t want to feel depressed right now! I love my job and am thrilled about our recently opened library. So, I have decided to write about the hows and the whys of becoming a Librarian following (a bit late) on a meme going around called Library Routes. If you are interested, have a look at The Library Routes wiki.

Well, I am probably more than a bit strange as I have always wanted to be a Librarian! No, I wasn’t born with a bun, glasses and a book in my hand – but I did learn to read at about 3-4 years old! My Mum’s family were avid users of the public library – particularly my Grandfather, who left school at 12 and educated himself by reading as many books as he could. As I grew up, I remember vividly my Mum taking us to the public library every week and before we went back again, I would have read all of my books, all of my sister’s and all of my Mum’s too! In many ways, the library was a forbidding building, but not to me. I just loved the books and the comics and especially admired the Librarian who helped me to choose what to read next – I wanted to be just like her!

Funnily enough, my school libraries were not up to much – I have vivid memories of hiding underneath the shelves in one of them with a book, trying to avoid a PE lesson. But the books were not the colourful and attractive creations that they are these days – old cloth bindings were the  norm. I probably borrowed far more from the public library than from those at school – these libraries were small and pretty unloved, with no staffing.

What I did enjoy, was going on the mobile library that visited my primary school. The Headteacher used to ask me to help return our class books to the mobile as I was good at alphabetical order! Oh, the stereotype was beginning already!

All through my school days, I cannot ever remember wavering from my goal of becoming a Librarian when I left. Without much career advice, I wrote to the Library Association, as it was then called, when I was in the Sixth Form and asked what I should do to further my career. I decided that I did not want to do a first degree in Librarianship, but went down the route of taking a degree in Ancient History and Archaeology, followed by a Master’s in Librarianship.

In those days (late 1970s), you had to do a Graduate Trainee year between the first degree and the Master’s. With my normal laziness, I didn’t try seriously enough to get this post and messed up interviews with Sheffield Public Library and Birmingham University Library! Instead, I took a Master’s in Ancient History and Archaeology, then was able to try again the next year and was lucky enough to get a post at Lancaster University Library, with a place at Sheffield to do Librarianship.

At this point, I was convinced that I was looking at a future career in academic libraries. The year at Lancaster totally changed that view! The staff there were brilliant, but I did not have a happy year at all, although I did learn a huge amount. During my time at Sheffield, I became convinced that I would go into public libraries – my first love after all. But, on leaving, the first post I was offered was in the Schools Library Service in Nottinghamshire – the Education Library Service.

I had a fantastic time working for ELS – it was great because a lot of my friends from Sheffield were also working for Nottinghamshire in a variety of library posts. After a year, some new posts came up in the city of Nottingham. These were to be the first professional librarians being placed into a number of schools. My boss, suggested that I try for one…. and a School Librarian was born!

So, looking back 27 years to that day when I first took up the date-stamp at The Manning School, do I regret the route and the choices that I made? After all, I have now worked in six schools and have never changed into another area of the profession – could I have done anything differently?

Well, I did try to change a couple of times, but somehow it wasn’t meant to be. My Mum said something to me a while ago – she said that I found my vocation when I “fell” into school librarianship! I think that she was right. From those first stumblings at Manning (I was pretty awful), to now, I wouldn’t change a thing. Along the way, I developed a passion for school librarianship – I honestly believe that it is the most important area of the profession. We play a part in shaping young minds and are privileged to see students grow and attain amazing things with our help. This is why I firmly believe that school librarianship must not be watered down – our students deserve the best-qualified and experienced people to run their libraries.

So, if you are reading this and are thinking of becoming a librarian – consider coming into schools. You can make such a huge difference! We need people who are highly educated, committed, passionate, caring, expert, knowledgeable, ICT literate, resourceful, assertive, well-read, brave, strong and bold!

School Librarianship – the greatest job in the world!

(Most of the time)

Well, folks, I have been neglecting this blog over the Summer – sorry! Anyone who knows me will understand that I have been really busy organising the refurbishment of my school library. Is that a valid excuse? Well, I think so!

Anyway, it is progressing very well and we hope to open it soon. From the time the work started, in July, I have been taking photos and posting them on the library site – Library Online. Also, I have been tweeting (probably too much) from The Librain’s account and also my school library account – Library Online – with almost daily updates. I think that because of this activity, I have been asked to do a presentation for the next Your School Library Course!

If you are interested in library design, then this course should be very interesting. There are some great presenters – I wish I could have had this course a year ago! Anyway, if you want to find out more, then check out the flyer below:

In between taking part in the latest Your School Library Course, cataloguing loads of new stock, tweeting, going to a conference and planning the new library, I have also been trying out three Web2.0 tools! Ages ago, I uploaded our catalogue to LibraryThing and put two widgets on the Library Online website. However, I have also seen two other tools – Gurulib and Shelfari – which I thought might be interesting to try also.

I am not doing a detailed review of these sites, just commenting after a quick look and in terms of how useful they might be to school librarians who need a way of displaying or accessing their stock from their website.

Also, bear in mind that our library stock is very small at the moment – only 2700 items. Out of the three sites, only LibraryThing asked for a subscription as it has a limit of 500 items.

So, here are the results of trying these out:

LibraryThing
On the site, widgets are very customisable, which is nice. The issue I have is that if you upload old books, then LibraryThing puts in a generic cover, if it cannot find the real one. The generic cover is not very pretty! I have, however, been able to upload the catalogue complete with the keywords – which have gone in LibraryThing’s “tags” field. As I originally exported the catalogue records into Excel, I was able to add the Dewey number into the “tag” field as well. With some books, again old ones, it cannot find details, so they are not uploaded. You can do lots of activities on LibraryThing, such as add reviews, join groups and so on. I had thought of using the site for my Reading Group then realised that, as most of them are under 13, the site rules say that they cannot join. So I am using a wiki for this.

GuruLib

Recent books from My Library

powered by Gurulib

Gurulib seems to be a lot more basic than the other two, some of the books were not recognised, but uploading the file went very smoothly and more quickly than the other sites. I have not yet spent much time exploring the site.

Shelfari

An interesting thing about making the Shelfari widget is that you have the option to choose a tag – this would enable a lot of flexibility. The site did allow me to upload the entire catalogue, although I did have some problems initially with getting the upload to go on to the correct “shelf”! Again, I have the problem with the unrecognised books that ended up with weird covers – but if I had the time, I could scan in the real ones.

What do you think?

I am really looking forward to the next Your School Library Course, which starts on June 13th. The focus this time is on Web2.0 and Information Literacy. This list of presenters looks fabulous and I can’t wait to get started.

Your School Library on Netvibes

Presenters

• Information Literacy – The Most Basic of the Basics by Mike Eisenberg
• Power to the pupils!: a concept for information management and information literacy in the school library by Lourense H. Das
• Promoting Information Literacy in School Education through Collaboration between School and Parents by Dr. Siu Cheung Kong
• Information Literacy Teaching Methods by Miranda van Roosmalen and Kees Kok
• Warp and Weft: Weaving Web 2.0 into the School Library Program by Kate Reid
• Information Literacy 2.0 by Mihaela Banek Zorica and Sonja Špiranec
• Literacies in the Web 2.0 World by Daniel Churchill
• The SMMMART B Way of Teaching IL by Lourdes T David
• Information Literacy in the curriculum (includes Dutch version) by Albert K. Boekhorst
• Information Literacy meets Library 2.0 in Schools by Peter Godwin
• Developing Information Literacy in School: Being Strategic by Sharon Markless
• Developing a Culture for Information Literacy within the School Environment by Patricia Montiel Overall
• A series of four podcasts on Information Literacy by Donna DesRoches and Carlene Walters
• Using Wiki to Implement Guided Inquiry by Lee FitzGerald
• Next Generation User Skills by David Kay
• Assessing Information Literacy Outcomes by Lesley Farmer
• Information Literacy With YouTube by Dana Dukic
• Our Neighbourhood: Cedar Cottage by Nancy Campos, Janet Thompson, Pat Parungao
• The hitchhiker: Information Literacy and Web 2.0 by Roeland Smeets
• Promoting Information Literacy in School Education through Collaboration between School and Parents by Dr Siu Cheung Kong

Almost a year ago I wrote a post about how I was trying to pull together all of the web services that I was developing in my previous school. I had created a library website, a wiki, a blog and was developing sections of the school’s VLE to support teaching and learning through the library – I decided to call it all LRC Online Services.

Well, I have now reached a similar stage in my new job – very quickly it seems! We already have the following library sites:

• Library Online – the main library site
• Library_Online Twitter account – used to put news updates on to any of the library sites
• Library Online Netvibes pages – these have been created to house news feeds from France, Germany, China and the UK. Also, I am adding in Business and Sports news feeds
• Library Online Wiki – this is a private wiki for our Reading Group

I expect you are seeing the pattern here! Yes, I am branding all of these with Library Online in order to draw all of these services together.

I have played around a bit with Wordle and made these temporary logos. These are the colours of the refurbished library – I think the one on the left looks best!

I may open this as a competition at school later on – I am sure that the students can do a better job!